Breathing Retraining Center started in January 2012, with a vision to bring breathing to the forefront as a means in and of itself to improve health -- especially for people who suffer from respiratory conditions like asthma, allergies, chronic colds, anxiety, snoring and other sleep disorders.

We teach self-help, self-care skills designed to show students how to tune in to their breathing and adjust the pattern as necessary to feel better. This seems to be especially needed right now, at a time where stress and the conditions it causes are rampant, and medical care is so expensive and out of reach for so many people.

Yet breathing for wellness is not a new idea, as some of my favorite quotes show.

"Improper breathing is a common cause of ill health. If I had to limit my advice on healthier living to just one tip, it would be simply to learn how to breathe correctly. There's no single more powerful - or more simple - daily practice to further your health and well-being than breathwork." ~ Andrew Weil, M.D.

“All chronic pain, suffering and diseases are caused from a lack of oxygen at the cell level.” ~Arthur C. Guyton, The Textbook of Medical Physiology”, the world’s most widely used medical textbook

Breathing Retraining Center’s mission is to make self-help, self-care breathing techniques accessible to anyone who wants to learn them. We focus on the Buteyko Breathing Method, which recently was lauded by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality after a comprehensive review of 22 studies of breathing techniques.

To recap our achievements in the first year, we:

Taught group and individual classes in San Francisco, Berkeley and San Rafael.

Held several open houses around the region.

Sponsored a free public awareness and education event for International Nose Breathing Week

Invited Senior Buteyko Educator Robert Litman from Arizona to teach a special class for people with sleep apnea, as the first step in establishing the best collaborative team we can find to support the vision.

Designed the upcoming Relaxation Skills Class to build confidence in that area so students are more at ease when they embark on the breathing-retraining curriculum. This also brings our work to a wider audience.

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Lisa Bowen is not licensed as a healing-arts practitioner by the state of California.

Opinions, including blog posts, web content, breathing classes, coaching and other services from Breathing Retraining Center LLC are offered by teachers who are not licensed by the State of California as physicians or other healing arts practitioners, unless otherwise noted.

We offer alternative, non-medical/non-psychological techniques, and our services are considered to be alternative or complementary to the healing arts that are licensed by the State of California.

Breathing Retraining Center LLC’s educational products, courses and coaching are designed to improve breathing skills for people whose issues may be related to habits that have the potential to be improved, as a self-care/wellness activity. Breathing difficulty may be a warning sign of a life-threatening heart or lung condition, infection or other illness. Always check with your doctor about your own situation.

The Buteyko Breathing Technique and other breathing-retraining strategies we teach are an alternative approach and are not the practice of medicine, psychology or a form of psychotherapy, nor are they a substitute for seeking medical or psychological advice from an appropriate professional health-care provider. We want to make the important distinction between using the Buteyko Breathing Technique and other breathing-retraining strategies for health and well-being and the practice of medicine, psychology or any other licensed health-care profession.

Breathing classes, coaching and other services from Breathing Retraining Center LLC are offered by teachers who are not licensed by the State of California as physicians or other healing-arts practitioners unless so noted. We offer alternative non-medical/non-psychological techniques and our services are considered to be alternative or complementary to the healing arts that are licensed by the State of California.